Computer-Intensive Methods in Traffic Safety Research

The analysis of traffic safety data archives has improved markedly with the development of procedures that are heavily dependent upon computers. Three such procedures are described here. The first procedure involves using computers to assist in the identification and correction of invalid data. The second procedure makes greater computational demands, and involves using computerized algorithms to fill in the “gaps” that typically occur in archival data when information regarding key variables is not available. The third and most computer-intensive procedure involves using data mining techniques to search archives for interesting and important relationships between variables. These procedures are illustrated using examples from data archives that describe the characteristics of traffic accidents in the USA and Australia.